Yours most sincerely, Wickham
Unexpectedly, Gabby felt a lump form in her throat as she stared down at the bold script. Her brother sounded both likable and as if he were disposed to have a care for them, and this sheet of paper, along with his scarce-remembered visit to Hawthorne Hall when she had been no more than eleven, was all she was ever to know of him.
It seemed hard. But then, she had learned, such was life.
The other sealed letter was indeed addressed to Messrs. Challow, Mather, and Yadon, she saw as she picked it up, then glanced again at Jem.
“Gabby, Gabby, is that Jem you’re talking to?” The library door flew open without warning. Lady Elizabeth Banning, an exuberant red-haired fifteen-year-old still faintly round with puppy fat, burst into the room. Like Gabby, she was dressed in the unrelieved black of mourning for their father although the obligatory period of time for such had passed, for the simple reason that they were the newest gowns any of the sisters possessed. The dispersal of funds for the purchase of mourning garments had been reluctantly allowed by Mr. Challow after the death of their father, although by rights, he said, he should not be approving any expenditures at all without the sanction of the new earl, whose funds they now were. Even continuing the minimal allowance that had in the past permitted Gabby to run the house had been the subject of some debate within the law firm, he told her, with the consensus being that, without notice from the new earl, the best course of action was to let things go on as they had been until they received instructions to the contrary.
“Oh, Jem, it is you! What did our brother say?” Beth’s spaniel-brown eyes had fixed on Jem at once, sparing Gabby the need to answer her original inquiry. She bore down on the pair of them, firing questions as she came. “Did you find him? Did you give him Gabby’s letter? What did he say? Can we go? Can we go?”
“I’m sorry, Gabby, I tried to stop her, but you know how she is,” Lady Claire Banning said with a sigh as she followed her younger sister into the room. Not even her sober black gown could detract from Claire’s dazzling combination of silky raven curls that spilled in charming profusion over slender shoulders, huge, thick-lashed golden-brown eyes, porcelain-pale skin, and perfect features. In addition, her figure was round where it should be round, slim where it needed to be slim, and altogether delectable. “She just could not contain herself one moment longer.”
If Claire could just have her season, Gabby thought, looking at her sister almost achingly, she would be overrun with eligible gentlemen wanting to marry her. The sad thing was that here, right under her own hand, was the very instrument that would have given Claire the future she needed, that she was entitled to by right of birth, that she deserved.
Marcus had granted permission for Claire to have her season. He had practically given Gabby carte blanche to fund it, too.
But Marcus was dead. The letters he had sent were now no more than worthless scraps of paper. As soon as Cousin Thomas was apprised that he had become the earl of Wickham, they would be very fortunate indeed not to be cast out of Hawthorne Hall forthwith.
A growing despair knotted Gabby’s stomach. What she had to tell her sisters was too, too cruel. If only, she thought, throat aching, Marcus had survived just a scant three more months, just until Claire had had her season. . . .
“For goodness’ sake, Jem, can’t you talk? Did you or did you not find our brother?” Beth demanded, bouncing like an excited puppy around the man who had taught her and her sisters to ride and hunt and fish and enjoy almost every imaginable outdoor pursuit. Over the years the sisters had come to regard him as coconspirator and friend rather than servant, and were on terms of disgraceful intimacy with one who was in actuality no more than a groom.
Jem looked even unhappier than before. “That I did, Miss Beth, but. . . .”
He glanced helplessly at Gabby, who looked down at the letter in her hand and took a deep breath, willing herself to sound composed as she broke the dreadful news.
At that moment Beth spied the letter, and with a quick movement and a gleeful cry snatched it from her sister’s hand.
“Beth, wait. . . .” Gabby groaned, grabbing for the letter, but speech was more of an effort than she had imagined and her protest was too strangled to deter her sister, who danced out of reach with a tantalizing grin. To learn how close all their hopes had been to being realized could only make the truth harder to bear. . . .
“Oh, Beth, try for a little decorum, do,” Claire put in crossly, throwing herself down in a chair near the fire and trying to pretend that she, too, was not vitally interested in the contents of the sheet that Beth now eagerly perused. “I declare, I’ve never in my life seen such a hoyden as you’re turning into.”
“At least I don’t break my neck craning it to look into every mirror I pass,” Beth retorted, glancing up for a moment to glare at her sister. Then as she returned her attention to the letter her face broke into a beatific smile and she looked at Claire again. “Oh, Claire, you’re to have your season! Our brother says we’re to go.”
Claire’s eyes widened, and soft color rushed into her cheeks as she sat up straight in the chair. “Beth, truly?” Her gaze flew to her older sister. “Gabby?”
She sounded almost afraid to believe that so wondrous a fate could be hers.
As indeed, Gabby thought, looking at Claire with a sudden sharp sensation that she could only conclude was heartbreak, she was right to be. What she would not give to be able to provide this one thing for Claire. . . .
At that moment the fire popped as loudly as a sharp clapping of hands and flared again, higher and hotter than before, momentarily drawing everyone’s startled attention to it. The color of the flames tinted the pale skin of Gabby’s hands an eerie shade of red, she saw, glancing down at the letter to the barristers that still rested beneath them. She had no doubt that her face was turned the same, suddenly most appropriate, hellish hue.
Because the most dreadfully sinful notion had just occurred to her. . . .
“Read it for yourself.” Beth thrust the letter at Claire, then perched on the arm of her sister’s chair, watching the older girl’s face with an air of jubilant expectancy. When Claire reached the end, she gave a little squeal of excitement. The two younger girls put their heads, one bright red and one raven black, together and began reciting the words aloud with increasing glee.
As her sisters read, and the fire died back down, Gabby made a decision. She was, she discovered with some surprise, a true Banning after all. Gaming ran strong in their blood, and now it was her turn to wager all on a daring throw of the dice. She stood, a too-thin woman of no more than medium height clad in head-to-toe black bombazine, her untamable chestnut hair dragged into a reasonably neat chignon at her nape, her pale, squarish face with its small, straight nose and decided mouth and chin brought to sudden vivid life by the fierce resolve that glowed from her usually calm gray eyes, and walked with the deliberate care she had learned to take to conceal her limp around the desk until she reached Jem’s side.
“Have you told anyone else of this? Talked to anyone on the ship, perhaps, or since you landed in England?” Gabby asked for his ears alone as they watched her sisters poring over the letter once again. Jem looked wretched as, finishing the missive for what must have been the dozenth time, both girls looked at each other and began to chatter excitedly. Gabby’s whisper turned urgent. “What I am asking you is, who else knows of my brother’s death?”
Servant and mistress were of much the same height, and their eyes were nearly on a level. Jem glanced at her, his brow deeply furrowed.
“No one in England, Miss Gabby, save you and me. I wouldn’t be talking to strangers about family business, on the ship or anywheres else, now would I? A few know in Ceylon, I reckon, but mostly natives and such.”
“Then I am going to ask you to do me a very big service.” Gabby spoke rapidly, before her nerve could fail her. “I am going to ask you to pretend that you left my brother’s side immediately after you re
ceived these letters, and never witnessed his death at all. I am going to ask you to pretend that, as far as you know, the earl is still alive and in Ceylon and will be home in his own good time.”
Jem’s eyes widened. As he met her determined gaze, his lips pursed in a soundless whistle.
“Miss Gabby, I can do that, and for you I will willingly, as you knows, but the truth of it is bound to come out sooner or later. Such like that always does, and then where will we be?” Jem’s low voice was both alarmed and cautionary.
“In no worse case than we are right now, and perhaps a great deal better off,” Gabby said firmly. “All we need is just a little time, and a little luck.”
“Gabby, aren’t you excited? We’re going to London,” Beth exclaimed rapturously, springing up from the arm of the chair and dancing forward to envelop her oldest sister in a suffocating hug. “Claire will have her season, and we’ll get to see the sights. Oh, Gabby, I’ve never been beyond Yorkshire in my life.”
“None of us have,” Claire chimed in. Her eyes were glowing with anticipation and her step was light as she joined them, although, conscious of her status as a mature young lady, she refrained from jumping up and down with the heedless abandon shown by Beth.
“London will be a treat for all of us.” Gabby, returning Beth’s hug, managed a credible smile. A sideways glance showed her that Jem was looking at her with as much alarm as if she’d suddenly grown horns and a tail.
“Does this mean we can have some new gowns?” Claire sounded almost wistful. Claire loved pretty clothes, and had upon many occasions spent hours poring over the fashionable sketches in such publications as the Ladies’ Magazine that, banned from the house by their father, still had chanced to come her way. Without being overly vain, Claire was very aware of her own beauty, and such matters as the latest hairstyles, or the design of a gown, were important to her. She had longed for a season in the worst way, but given their circumstances had known that her chances of ever having one were remote. To her credit, she had been very good about the prospect that it was never to be. But now—now she could have one after all. Despite the risks, Gabby was suddenly fiercely glad to be able to provide Claire with such a chance.
“Certainly we may,” Gabby said, refusing to look at Jem again as she well and truly threw caution to the wind. “An entire new wardrobe, in fact, for each of us.”
The fire in the hearth popped loudly and flared again just then, causing Gabby to jump. As her sisters exclaimed more over their unprecedented good fortune, Gabby could not forbear casting the hearth a sideways, slightly nervous glance.
Why could she not escape the feeling that, no matter how pure her motives, some sort of hellish bargain had just been made?
2
A little more than two weeks later, the earl of Wickham’s ancient coach lumbered clumsily over rain-pitted roads, bound for London. Stivers and Mrs. Bucknell, the housekeeper, along with a footman and a maid, had been sent on ahead a few days before to open the family townhouse on Grosvenor Square, which had been closed for more than a decade, and engage such additional staff as was deemed necessary to run it. Still muttering dire warnings whenever Gabby came within earshot, Jem rode on the box beside John-Coachman, his hat brim pulled low over his eyes to shield against the drizzle. Inside, Claire and Beth chattered excitedly, watched over by Twindle, the now elderly governess who had joined the family with the advent of Claire’s mother and stayed on in the face of that lady’s demise. Sitting beside Claire on the worn plush seat that, despite all their efforts to freshen it, still smelled faintly musty, Gabby smiled when necessary and looked out the window at the boggy moor they were leaving behind. The soaked heath, gray sky, and unceasing rain were as familiar to her as the confines of Hawthorne Hall, she realized, and as surprisingly dear. She had known no other home, and it cost her a pang to realize that, however this game played out, her future, and that of her sisters, in all likelihood lay elsewhere.
Having made up her mind to seize the day while she could, she had suffered sleepless nights and many qualms of conscience ever since. The wrongness of what she was doing unsettled her; but to allow her sisters to suffer for want of a little resolution was, in her estimation, more wrong still. She quieted her conscience by reminding herself that, even if something did not happen to bring the whole scheme tumbling down around her ears, she did not mean to keep up the pretense forever; as soon as Claire was safely married she meant to “receive word” of Marcus’s death, and then the sham would come to an end. How wrong could what was actually no more than buying a little time to get themselves creditably established be?
“Is your leg paining you, Gabby?” Claire asked, turning her attention to her older sister as Beth was now engaged in a spirited discussion with Twindle over the sights that it might be proper for a very young lady to visit while in London. Astley’s Ampitheatre and the beasts at the Royal Exchange were, in Twindle’s judgment, just passably acceptable. Covent Garden—“. . . and how you came to be knowing of that place, Miss Beth, I can’t begin to think . . .” was definitely not. Having grown accustomed over the years to Gabby’s infirmity—indeed, she and Beth never even thought of it as such; Gabby’s damaged leg was as much an accepted part of her as her straight-as-a-horse’s-tail hair—Claire didn’t sound overly concerned.
“Was I frowning, to make you think so?” Gabby asked lightly, summoning a smile. “My leg is fine. I was just running over a list of all I have to do when we reach London.”
“Do you think Aunt Salcombe will consent to sponsor Claire, Gabby?” Beth broke off her conversation with Twindle to ask with a worried frown. Although too young herself to partake of the pleasures of balls and routs and evenings spent at such fabled bastions of the haute ton as Almack’s, she had entered into the preparations for Claire’s come-out with gusto.
“I can’t say for certain, of course, but I am hopeful that she will. After all, she did invite me to make my come-out under her aegis when I turned eighteen, saying that, as she had no children of her own, she would adore to present her niece to the ton. And you are as much her niece as I am, and a far better prospect to make a splash.” This last Gabby, with a twinkle, directed to Claire. What she forebore to add was that, when the invitation had arrived all those years ago, she had been over the moon at the prospect of a London season, until her father had laughed and said that obviously his sister Augusta did not realize that her eldest niece was now a cripple and would disgrace her in any ballroom which was unfortunate enough to suffer her presence. Gabby had not been privileged to see what the earl had replied to his sister, but the invitation had been turned down and never repeated. Crushed at first, Gabby had come to realize, in retrospect, that it was probably for the best. She could not have left Claire and Beth, then eleven and eight, with no one but Twindle and Jem to buffer them from their father’s excesses even for the few months of a single season, and to have abandoned them forever via marriage, which was, after all, the ultimate goal of all that frivolity, would have been impossible. And her father would never have let her take her sisters to live with her, either to London or her new husband’s home. What Matthew Banning possessed, he possessed completely, whether he valued it or not.
“Lady Salcombe is a very high stickler, Miss Gabby.” A shade of anxiety darkened Twindle’s narrow face as she spoke. From the circumstance of having lived in London for years before coming to Hawthorne Hall, Twindle was at least vaguely familiar with a number of the great lords and ladies who made up the fashionable scene.
“Well, if she is not inclined to help us then we must make shift without her,” Gabby said with assumed cheerfulness. Though green to the ways of London, she was not so green that she did not realize that the assistance of her father’s sister was of paramount importance in making Claire’s introduction to the ton the success it should be. Being herself firmly on the shelf, Gabby was, she felt, perfectly qualified to act as her sister’s chaperone. As the daughter of an earl, even such an eccentric and reclusive on
e as Lord Wickham had been, she and her sisters must command a certain place in Society. But she knew no more of London and town ways than she had read of in books, heard about from Twindle, and observed from watching her father’s usually less than top-drawer guests over the years. And she had almost no acquaintances there. As she had told Claire, if Lady Salcombe refused to help them they would manage—somehow. But not nearly so well, or so easily, as if that lady agreed to stand their friend.
Always at the back of her mind lurked the knowledge that they must make the most of this time she had snatched from the jaws of fate: there could be no more than this single season for Claire.
“Do we not have any other relations in town who could assist us if Aunt Salcombe refuses?” Beth asked curiously.
“Besides Cousin Thomas and Lady Maud, you mean?” Gabby smiled as Beth made a face. “There are various assorted relations, I believe, but I prefer to start with Lady Salcombe. She is, or used to be, quite a pillar of society, you know.”
Gabby sought to turn the conversation then by wondering aloud if the village she could see from the window was West Hurch, or not. Just as she thought it best to keep the knowledge of Marcus’s death and the truly desperate nature of this trip from her sisters and everyone else save Jem, so, too, did she think it best not to make Claire and Beth overly conscious of the unconventional nature of their family structure. Although it was true that she at least did have fashionable relatives other than their father’s kin, it was doubtful that any of them could, or would, be of much help in facilitating Claire’s come-out. They had never visited Hawthorne Hall, or evinced any interest in herself or her sisters that she knew of. The problem was that each of the earl’s offspring had had a different mother, and those mothers had varied widely on the social scale. Marcus’s mother, Elise de Melancon, had journeyed to London from Ceylon for her season amid hopes that she would make a great match. She had been both an acknowledged beauty of unexceptional birth and a considerable heiress. Her union with the Earl of Wickham had satisfied all parties, although after a scant two years with her new husband the beautiful young countess had been so little enamoured of married life that she had taken her baby son and fled back to Ceylon. Upon that lady’s death a few years later, the earl had once again visited London to find a bride. This time his unknowing victim had been Gabby’s mother, Lady Sophia Hendred, as well born as himself but neither particularly beautiful nor particularly rich; she had died in childbed some three years after Gabby’s advent. Claire’s mother, Maria Dysart, a beauty of no more than respectable birth and no fortune at all, had caught the earl’s eye on a jaunt to Bath and had been considered to have married above her when she wed the recent widower. She had lasted just long enough to produce Claire before succumbing to what was described as a wasting disease. Beth’s mother had been an obscure clergyman’s daughter. Fortunately for the legions of unmarried ladies still out there, by the time the former Miss Bolton had fallen down the stairs at Hawthorne Hall, breaking her neck, the earl had suffered the riding accident that had confined him to a wheel chair for the rest of his life. No other countess had graced Hawthorne Hall with her presence, and it had been left to Gabby to act as mistress of the house, and surrogate mother to her younger sisters, a role that had suited her very well.
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